Following this morning’s trio of car unveilings in Jerez, Caterham this afternoon rolled out their Renault powered CT05 Formula One, after morning teething problems saw a delay in proceedings.

With rookie Marcus Ericsson at the wheel the team finally revealed their 2014 F1 challenger shortly after 3pm local time, with the car’s interesting front-nose assembly being the most notable feature.

As can be seen above the radically shaped nose is almost flush with the leading edge of the front-wing, meaning no protrusion. However, unlike the cars we have seen so far there is a wide vanity panel beyond the forward bulkhead, which stretches down the narrow nose.

“At the front of the car, the area that will obviously inspire most debate, we have focused a lot of effort on optimising flow structures around the nose, the front of the chassis and the reduced-width front wing area, all in response to the 2014 regulation changes,” said Technical Director Mark Smith.

Aside from the nose, which will divide opinion, the car that could bring the Leafield squad its first points in Formula One is an attractive one. Retaining last year’s colour scheme while featuring the same gearbox and rear-wing profiles as Red Bull makes for a neat package at the rear.

As reported last week, 2014 is a crucial season for Caterham, with team owner Tony Fernandes threatening to quit Formula One should there be no improvement in his team’s performance. After four seasons battling with Marussia yet still out of touch of the teams ahead, the change in regulations could open the door for some much needed success.

“We believe CT05 is a good starting point for us to deal with the new regulations and their associated challenges, in particular in terms of reliability,” said Team Principal and CEO Cyril Abiteboul. “We have a lot of very talented people at Leafield who have worked tirelessly to bring this car to life and everyone has played a part in helping us exceed all the targets we set. We obviously won’t know where we really are in relation to the other teams until the first race, but we believe we have answered the challenges presented by the new regulations as effectively as we can.”

With reliability set to be the central focus in the early stages of the season and little information on which powertrain manufacturer will be the most capable, Abiteboul believes that Caterham’s collaboration with Renault and Red Bull puts them in the correct position to move up the grid.

“In Renault Sport F1 and Red Bull Technology, we have technical partners that have powered the world championship-winning team for the last four years and while we are realistic enough to know we are very unlikely to be competing at the front of the grid there is no reason why we should not be fighting higher than we have done since we came into the sport in 2010. We have extensive experience of working with both Renault and Red Bull, and that is going to be crucial this year. Reliability and energy management will play a key role in 2014, especially early in the season, so our experience of working so closely with both organisations since 2011 will definitely help throughout the course of the season.”

The only issue I see here is a vulnerable front wing, as it is further ahead than the nose. This may be modified (like the 2012 Williams one), but I doubt the entire wing and nose will be completely redesigned, especially as the nose channels air, and with a different nose the entire car could be affected.

I wouldnt call it interesting. More like ridiculous. Thw whole treatment looks like it would produce lift if anything. Not to mention how fragile the wing attachment appears…….Mike Gascoyne where are you?

Not that I was even a twinkle in my father’s eye when some of those earlier cars were on the track…but (and correct me if I am wrong) both the fan car and the 6 wheeler were both banned as they won (albeit by unfair advantage)…so the name of the game in F1 is to win…if the car is ugly so what, this isn’t a beauty pageant.

If it doesnt work fine..but if it works..watch all the teams start lodging protests in some shape or form (no pun intended).

Let’s be honest, these cars are the most expensive comedy sketch ever devised on this planet. No one has ever taken a “member” joke to such extremes. Even Bernie is now looking at these and saying “Now I HAVE seen everything!”

I have little doubt that if they did an F1 skit on Month Python, their car entry would look EXACTLY like the CT05.

Actually, I wonder if these cars will be allowed into the Middle East events, with their decency rules and laws I think the teams may be taking some serious risks. Which begs the question, would we mind if the designers responsible for this got stoned?

(I mean with rocks Random, obviously the other interpretation already took place during design stage.)

These new noses just get worse and worse. I thought I’d seen it all with Ferrari’s vacuum cleaner adapter, and McLaren’s phallic protuberance. But now Caterham have trumped the lot. Words cannot express just how hideously ugly it is.

Certainly in the late 70s and 80s, if you’d taken the livery off the cars, you would easily be able to tell them apart. I think it’s great that these noses are all different. I’m amazed that the computers didn’t all come up with the same solution, but I suppose it is influenced by the rest of the car, which will all be slightly different.

There used to be quite a range of design solutions. But with ever-more tightly specified regulations, and ever-more computer-aided design tools, the general appearance of the cars has tended to become more uniform.

Raises an interesting point: If the CAD and CFD systems that the teams use are based on the same (or similar) algorithms (which I contend they will be), then these CAD and CFD systems will all come to the same (or very similar) solutions to maximising performance within any given set of regulatory limits. So basically 11 teams spend millions on running expensive systems that all come up with (largely) the same results.

In the CFD software you reply what you could do in the wind tunnel without actually building the car (or the model). The software doesn´t “designs” the car. It just simulates the behaviour of a given shape when put in an airstream. But the shape must be designed by a person (with the aid of CAD) and be feed to the CFD software. CDF softwares are not so far that they could re-design the shape to fulfill a set of given conditions, but I think that in the future they will.

Well, tyre manufacturers have already tried genetic algorithms to optimize the shape of grooves, with some good results.
I think that is is perfectly doable to change a CFD software so it can actually morph shapes to optimize them within specific bounds, but since these algorithms (genetic, simulated annealing, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, etc.) are rather simple strategies based on trial and error, they need a lot of computing power and time, which flies in the face of the resource restrictions. So careful analysis by a human being should be the better option.

Yes, CFD is an analysis tool rather than a design tool (I.E. CAD). But if the CFD systems are using similar (or identical) algorithms then they will tend to guide the designers (and the CAD systems the designers use) towards similar solutions. Just how many different algorithms exist to plot the pressures created by a 3-dimensional airflow over a 3-dimensional structure? Not many, and all will be based on the same core principals and research.

Yes, the CFD systems are honed with real-world data taken from the cars, and each team’s car data will be different. But the car data is still (ultimately) a function of the algorithmic calculations harnessed by the designers, so I still stand by the point: Each team is spending millions using CAD and CFD systems that will tend towards uniformity in the design solutions developed using those systems.

This isn’t to belittle the designers and engineers who develop these cars – I am well aware that CAD and CFD don’t automatically design the cars. But those clever designers are all being guided by the same (or similar) core algorithms, and this could be the reason that we see such uniformity in F1 car design these days.

How about 1979? The McLaren M26, Ferrari T4 (which the Caterham nose reminds me of), the Arrows A1/Shadow DN9 (which have the flat nose of the latest Ferrari) , the Renault RS10, the Ligier JS11 and various others.

Absolutely. This nose allows for a pretty high bulkhead and a pull rod suspension like the Ferrari has, which means that there is no push rod in in line of sight from the front to the lover outside of the side pods and it leaves a lot more space for the airflow than the Ferrari nose, which should give a pretty awesome clean air flow to the side pods! It will come with some weight though, but I guess aero trumps weight here.

Goodness me! – nice colour, nice rear, but it looks as if the front has been bolted on – and could snap in half at any moment! Not as awful as STR’s nose, but at least Mercedes have restored some sanity in the looks dept.

Seriously, these 2014 cars look absolutely horrible!!! From my point of view, since year 2009 (2008 was the last year of great looking cars), It gets worse and worse every year WTF is going on in F-1 these days!!!

The 2014 noses will make F1 into a laughing stock in the eyes of the general public and ultimatley less marketable. Not only are they ugly, they are utterly ridiculous. The sensory appeal of F1 should always be of paramount importance and I refuse to believe that safety and aesthetics need to be mutually exclusive. Most frustrating is that the 2014 cars would look far more attractive than their high-nose predecessors were it not for their offensive appendages. For the good of the sport the FIA must end this madness and bring back the beauty.

Think I’ll probably be shot for suggesting this but it reminds me of the beautiful 1979/80 Ferrari 312T http://goo.gl/ArJzHK, the way the front wing is hung from a mounting point under a secondary wing. Certainly very different but also one of the most interesting interpretations of the regs so far.

Yep. Some of the commenters round here sound as if they need a whiff of the smelling salts, the way they’re carrying on. It’s growing on me. Definitely no worse than the Ferrari, although Red Bull and Mercedes have shown that some kind of elegance can be salvaged from these regs. I expect to see a few tweaked paintjobs, if nothing else, before Melbourne.

I have been a huge fan of F1 for nearly 40 years, I have seen all sorts of designs but these are radical. Love them or hate if you are interested in the tech side of F1 then never before have we seen anything like it. I have a feeling teams will be working long nights this year as they re-design front wings and noses. Budgets will be broken. (Did someone mention budget capping in F1). My gut feeling is that this could also spell the end for some teams as they struggle to keep up.

Good to hear the perspective of a long-time fan (like me). Yes, I think this is Caterham’s swansong, and an unfortunate one at that. One wonders what Catherham has gotten for the hundreds of millions they’ve spent on F1; not a single point to boast of, and a series of homely cars (their stepped-nose design of the last two years was awfully ungraceful as well, in my opinion) which can’t have advanced their street car image much, at least in terms of aesthetics. F1 management has always been dysfunctional, but it still shocks me that they couldn’t see past their noses (pun intended) and write one or two more lines in the regulations that would have prevented this aesthetic nightmare at the front of the ’14 cars…do they just not care, or is it really true that the super-rich are actually less intelligent than most ordinary folks?

obviously then you disagree with adrian newey’s interpretation as well…but what is his opinion worth? let me put it another way. if this was a road car would you buy it just because it was economical to run and had great acceleration and roadholding?

@voodoopunk that is not what i said and i doubt whether you have actually read AN’s comments either. in my view the “pinnacle’ should encapsulate all elements. design excellence is a prerequisite within reason.

as for your comparison between aircraft well they are 50years apart and each are a design element of their respective times.

all F1 cars are designed for the ‘now’. have you ever seen a team enter an identical car in a year on year in the modern era?

The front end looks like a very spare, bargain interpretation of the new aero rules; meant to get the job done without any niceties.

The troubling part for me are the side pods. Those have to be the biggest side pods…in the world!

This car had to be a difficult one for Caterham. Already suffering with low budget, the new power unit would have cut into CFD and wind tunnel budgets that were already restricted compared with many of its competitors. And what would be left to invest in compact packaging solutions to wrap the new skin around.

I hope the car looks better to the real analysts than it does to me because it would be a shame to see this team fall further off the pace.

Not sure why everyone is so picky and worked up about how it looks.
I guess you all married to supermodels too?
It’s great to see the variety of designs for the new cars and all the teams having to try something new.
Bring it on.
If any of the new designs turn out to give a dominant advanced in speed, they will suddenly be brilliant.

Well Caterham will win something this year: ugliest car on the grid! Hats off to their engineers for designing the most godawful nose ever!
I have a feeling the FIA will revise their regs for next season to eliminate these craptastic noses!

Whilst I have to agree that the front end and nose isn’t the best looker in the bunch what people have to remember is that this is the first day of PRE-SEASON testing and as such the whole 4 days are around confirming weather the CFD and wind tunnel modelling actually represent reality.

Only when some meaningful track time and data has been gathered can anyone have any idea which interpretation will be the best, for sure come the first race you can expect a lot of the grid to be sporting similar front ends.

Until then lets leave it up to the different teams to decide what is what, at the end of the day that is what they are paid for and the proof will be in lap time not some beauty contests.

Is Caterham’s windtunnel broken, or perhaps there was a crack on the CAD monitor? How on earth did it get to the point when someone said “yup that looks good…pretty and aerodynamic…well done everyone”???